Canon 5DS R Expected Soon: What About Lenses and Sharpness?
Get Canon 5DS and Zeiss Otus and Zeiss 135mm f/2 APO-Sonnar at B&H Photo.
With a little luck, I expect to have the Canon 5DS R on Tuesday June 16 or so.
For background information on the Canon EOS 5DS / 5DS R, see:
- Canon’s EOS 5DS / EOS 5DS R: Dynamic Range Confirmed Same as 5D Mark III, Also Noise and ISO
- Canon’s EOS 5DS/R: Has Electronic First Curtain Shutter (EFC Shutter) for ZERO Vibration Exposures
- Canon’s 50 Megapixel Leap: EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R
- Canon’s EOS 5DS R: no Optical Low Pass Filter / Anti-Aliasing Filter
Sharpness
The obvious question is how much detail the 5DS R can record with its 50-megapixel sensor: not a whole lot more than 24 megapixels with many lenses! That’s the rub: even the best lenses are going to show limits and the slightest error in focus accuracy or technical execution is a Big Flub, so work on your technical skills. This is true with the Nikon D810 or Sony A7R or Sony A7R II also, but it’s all the more intense at 50MP.
Fifty megapixels is an oversampling approach that will deliver outstanding per-pixel quality if all you want is a ~24 megapixel image from the 50MP sensor. Too much discussion board whining out there that fails to understand image quality as a priority. So it’s the best of both worlds: get more resolution (for my part, hurrah!), or get a higher per-pixel output quality at any lower downsampled resolution (shoot raw, process to 24MP, throw away the raw if all you want is a superb 24MP JPEG). Equivalently, 50MP will make an awesome print with fewer digital artifacts than the Canon 5D Mark III.
Accordingly, I intend to focus on the Zeiss Otus 85mm f/1.4 APO-Planar, Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4 APO-Distagon and Zeiss 135mm f/2 APO-Sonnar, because these are the reference lenses, period. And then there’s the next Otus sometime. :)
I’ll be shooting other lesser lenses, and there will be some good ones (and some obvious stinkers), but even the Otii will find 50 megapixels a study in perfect technical execution. But when done right, the results should be stunning.